As an entrepreneur, you definitely want your business to grow and achieve success not only in your local area but globally. However, setting up stores in many towns around the world is expensive and cannot be afforded at all even for the major retailers such as Walmart.
Thanks to technology, it is now possible to grow your business globally while operating from a single location. Using a quality e-commerce platform, you can reach out to people in advanced places such as Beverly Hills while still covering local people in poor countries.
Setting up a quality e-commerce platform is the most difficult part in setting up an online business especially when starting from scratch. The costs could go as high as $8000 to set up an e-commerce website from the ground.
Again, thanks to technology, it is possible to set up a secure and operational e-commerce platform using tools such as Amazon Webstore and Shopify. All these platforms work on the same principle. However, most experts have for long recommended the use of Shopify for a number of reasons.
Some of the main reasons why Shopify is recommended are:
Security
The rate of cybercrime is on the rise with more than $2 billion being lost on an annual basis. A few years ago, one of the largest retail store in the United States called Target was attacked by cybercriminals who tapped user data and a lot of money was lost. Therefore, users are worried about all this when they are shopping online and submitting their credit card data. Shopify has been around for more than 10 years. It has hosted thousands of websites and stores. It has hundreds of employees purely dedicated to security of the clients. Therefore, users who are using shopify will develop trust with their clients for security purposes.
Ease of use
For someone who is operating on a budget, there is a need to cut on operation costs. It is very possible for such a person to create his own shopify website without having to hire an expert to do the same. Experts recommend for people who can afford it to hire an expert to customize the website and make it look good. Once the site is set up, adding products and descriptions is an easy task to do.
Added Features
Having an online store is not the end for any entrepreneur looking forward to set up an online business. It’s the beginning of many other things. There are added features which are required for all this. For instance, one needs to have a blog which can be used to share relevant information. Secondly, there are features such as pop-ups and communication chat that are included in the shopify platform. Another aspect is on payment methods integration. There are more than 100 payment gateways that have been integrated in this service. Some of these modes of payments are: Moneybookers, PayPal and Credit cards among others.
Need for an expert
As noted above, it is possible for one to design his online store individually using shopify. However, there is a consensus among many experts on the need to get someone who is experienced and one who has done similar projects in the past. There are many things which a newbie with no experience can’t perform. For instance, for an e-commerce store to be successful, it should have a unique logo which an amateur without any experience can’t handle.
Amit Porwal is the Founder and CEO of Expert Village Media, a team of Shopify development experts working on apps that enable merchants to do more with their stores. Check out all the apps here.